Afghanistan

Debate between Boris Johnson and Yvette Cooper

Monday 6th September 2021 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

Yes, of course. My hon. Friend is entirely right in what she says. That is why we are going to continue to put all the pressure that we can on the Taliban to ensure safe passage for the groups that I have described. We are joined in that by friends and partners around the world.

[Yvette Cooper (Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford) (Lab)]

May I join the tributes to our armed forces who have worked so hard?

There are still people being persecuted and hunted by the Taliban because they worked for the UK Government, but through contractors, not as direct employees. They have not had replies to their ARAP applications and the rumour circulating is that they may have to wait for the resettlement scheme, but also that many of the places on the resettlement scheme have already been allocated and that the scheme is almost full. Can the Prime Minister clarify the situation for those people, tell us whether some of the resettlement scheme places have been pre-allocated and if so how many, and say what will be done for those contractors as well as direct employees, to whom we owe an obligation?

[The Prime Minister]

The right hon. Lady raises an important question. I can tell her that the ARAP places have not been transferred and that they continue to be valid—people on the ARAP scheme continue to be eligible. Nor is it correct to say that the initial budget of 5,000 for the resettlement scheme has already been filled. That is not correct either.

Afghanistan

Debate between Boris Johnson and Yvette Cooper

Wednesday 18th August 2021 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

Like many of us, I have been lobbied extensively about the excellent work done by Mr Pen Farthing. I am well aware of his cause and all the wonderful things that he has done for animals in Afghanistan. I can tell my hon. Friend that we will do everything that we can to help Mr Pen Farthing and others who face particular difficulties, as he does—as I say, without in any way jeopardising our own national security. These are concerns shared across the international community, from the region itself to all of the NATO alliance and, indeed, all five permanent members of the UN Security Council. I will chair a virtual meeting of the G7 in the coming days.

Thirdly, we have an enduring commitment to all the Afghan people. Now more than ever we must reaffirm that commitment. Our efforts must focus on supporting the Afghan people in the region, particularly those fleeing conflict or the threat of violence. We therefore call on the United Nations to lead a new humanitarian effort in the region.

[Yvette Cooper (Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford) (Lab)]

I thank the Prime Minister for giving way, and I welcome his commitment to support in the region, and also the Government’s commitment to a resettlement programme. The Home Secretary announced in 2019 that the UK would continue a resettlement scheme of 5,000 refugees a year after the Syrian scheme closed. Can the Prime Minister confirm that the announcement today of an Afghan resettlement scheme is in addition to that existing 5,000 resettlement commitment, as opposed to simply being a refocusing or displacement of that existing 5,000-a-year resettlement programme?

[The Prime Minister]

I am very grateful to the right hon. Lady, because I think that she has asked a question that has formed in many people’s minds about the 5,000. Yes, indeed, the 5,000 extra in the resettlement scheme are additional to those already announced. We will support those people in coming to this country. We will also support the wider international community delivering humanitarian projects in the region by doubling the amount of humanitarian and development assistance that we had previously committed to Afghanistan this year with new funding—[Interruption]—wait for it—taking this up to £286 million with immediate effect. We call on others to work together on a shared humanitarian effort, focusing on helping the most vulnerable in what will be formidably difficult circumstances.

International Aid: Treasury Update

Debate between Boris Johnson and Yvette Cooper

Programme motion
Tuesday 13th July 2021 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I am just coming to the end. The moment the Office for Budget Responsibility forecasts show that both of those conditions will sustainably be met, from the point at which they are met we will willingly restore our aid budget to 0.7%.

[Yvette Cooper (Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford) (Lab)]

Will the Prime Minister give way?

[The Prime Minister]

Plenty of people want to speak in this debate. The Government will of course review the situation every year and place a statement before this House in accordance with the International Development (Official Development Assistance Target) Act 2015. But as we conduct that annual review, we will fervently wish to find that our conditions have been satisfied. This is one debate where the Government and hon. Members from across the House share the same objective—

[Yvette Cooper]

Will the Prime Minister give way?

[The Prime Minister]

I am sure the right hon. Lady will have plenty of time later on.

As I was saying, we share the same objective and the same fundamental convictions. We all believe in the principle that aid can transform lives, and by voting for this motion, hon. Members will provide certainty for our aid budget and an affordable path back to 0.7%, while also allowing for investment in other priorities, including the NHS, schools and the police. As soon as circumstances allow and the tests are met, we will return to the target that unites us, and I commend this motion to the House.

Covid-19: Road Map

Debate between Boris Johnson and Yvette Cooper

Monday 22nd February 2021 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

Outdoor sport for schools can go ahead from 8 March, as I said earlier. The evidence for all the decisions that we have taken—a massive quantity of scientific evidence—has been deposited today with the House.

[Yvette Cooper (Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford) (Lab) [V]]

Our covid rates in Yorkshire have fallen much more slowly than in London and the south-east, partly because fewer people can work from home and more people in our towns have to go out to work to keep our factories and distribution centres running. The Prime Minister keeps saying that he is supporting self-isolation, but most workers are not getting that support, and that is particularly hitting our manufacturing towns. Will he think again? Will he extend that support, help those workers, and help us to get our rates down?

[The Prime Minister]

We are increasing our support, as I have said, for people who are self-isolating and continue to look after our workers throughout the pandemic. The best thing for all those businesses in Yorkshire is to continue, as they are doing, to get the disease down and keep it under control.

Covid-19 Update

Debate between Boris Johnson and Yvette Cooper

Monday 12th October 2020 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend is spot on. It is so important to avoid an uncontained second wave in order to protect the NHS, and allow the treatments and therapies for other non-covid afflictions to continue.

[Yvette Cooper (Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford) (Lab)]

Just a month ago, the Prime Minister described his moonshot plan, under which millions of tests would be done and returned every day. He said,

“if everything comes together, it may be possible even for challenging sectors like theatres to have life much closer to normal before Christmas.”

Families are now feeling that a normal Christmas is further away than ever, and local health officials in our area have said that people are waiting for six days, not a day, to get their test results. If we could come back from the moon and get back to what is happening on planet Earth, when will he have enough testing capacity in place so that my constituents can get their results in 24 hours?

[The Prime Minister]

The daily test process has gone up by 34% just in the last month, and daily capacity has gone up by 28%. As the right hon. Lady knows, by the end of this month, NHS Test and Trace is confident that it will be doing 500,000 tests—it will have capacity, I should say, for 500,000 tests a day.

Covid-19

Debate between Boris Johnson and Yvette Cooper

Tuesday 22nd September 2020 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend is right. We are doing everything we can to protect people, particularly those in care homes, who are so vulnerable, as we saw during the early stages of the pandemic. We have massively increased the winter action plan for care homes: putting in another £546 million; stopping movement between care homes; and taking the tough decision to stop visits to care homes in lockdown areas, which is very difficult for elderly people in care homes. The reason that we are taking those and other difficult measures now is that we want to avoid another national lockdown of exactly the type that my hon. Friend also rightly wants to avoid.

[Yvette Cooper (Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford) (Lab)]

Some of my constituents have been waiting for four days, five days or even longer to get their test results back. In July, the Government rightly promised that 80% of in-person tests would receive their results within 24 hours of booking. That figure is now down to below 20%. That is dangerous: it means that people are not in the tracing system and their contacts are not being traced; it makes it easier for the virus to spread; and it makes it more likely that we will face even tougher restrictions, which the Prime Minister has described, across the whole country. Given that the Government made so many mistakes on testing in the first wave, we cannot afford for him to get this wrong again now. When will that 80% target now be met?

Brexit Negotiations

Debate between Boris Johnson and Yvette Cooper

Thursday 3rd October 2019 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

My right hon. Friend is correct in his surmise about our intentions, but I think that the House and people watching the debate should be reminded that what the UK has done is already very considerable. We have already moved quite some way. I hope that our friends and partners across the channel understand that, and I hope that my right hon. Friend understands it as well. We have gone the extra mile. What we are doing both on agrifoods and on goods, with the principle of consent, is, I think, a very considerable move towards compromise.

[Yvette Cooper (Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford) (Lab)]

Will the Prime Minister agree to give evidence on this to the Liaison Committee before the European Council? Will he also confirm that he is proposing to remove the provisions in article 4 of annexe 4 to the protocol, in particular the commitment not to reduce fundamental rights at work—occupational health and safety, fair working conditions and employment standards? Will he confirm that, far from increasing workers’ rights and the protection of those rights as many Labour Members have urged him to do, he is in fact proposing to reduce that protection and make it easier for Conservative Governments to do what they have always done, and cut workers’ rights?

[The Prime Minister]

The right hon. Lady is in error if she thinks that that is our intention. We will be ensuring that this country has the highest standards for workers’ rights and for environmental protections. I should be more than happy to meet her to explain what we are going to do.

Prime Minister's Update

Debate between Boris Johnson and Yvette Cooper

Wednesday 25th September 2019 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I thank the hon. Lady. Actually, she asks an extremely important question, because I do think, in all intellectual honesty, that Opposition Members who voted for the Benn-Burt Act—who wanted to take no deal off the table and who voted for the surrender Act—should vote for the deal that we produce, and I would like to hear from them that they will. We will, I am very confident, make progress towards getting a deal, and I hope it will command their support.

[Yvette Cooper (Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford) (Lab)]

Earlier today, the Attorney General did not just say that he would respect the Supreme Court’s judgment; he also said, “We got it wrong.” The Prime Minister has today just said the opposite, and effectively said that he thinks it is okay for a Prime Minister to cancel Parliament for as long as he so chooses in order not to answer questions. Many of us had disagreements with his predecessors—the right hon. Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May), David Cameron, John Major, Margaret Thatcher—but none of them would have done this. None of them would have been so chaotic. None of them would have shown such disregard for the rule of law or tried to concentrate power in their own hands by cancelling Parliament in this way. Why is he so entitled that he thinks it is one rule for one person—one rule for him—and a different one for everyone else?

[The Prime Minister]

I think the historical record will reflect that several Prime Ministers—I think all Prime Ministers—have had Prorogations. John Major, for instance, prorogued for several weeks in advance of an election. On the substantive question about the view of my right hon. and learned Friend the Attorney General about the judgment yesterday, let us be clear that we are as one in respecting the Supreme Court, and we are as one in thinking that that judgment was wrong.

G7 Summit

Debate between Boris Johnson and Yvette Cooper

Tuesday 3rd September 2019 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I know the great interest that my right hon. Friend has taken in Ukraine and the fortunes of that wonderful country. I assure him that President Zelensky rang me before the G7 particularly to insist on his continued concerns about the Russian activities. I am sure that those concerns are shared across the House.

[Yvette Cooper (Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford) (Lab)]

In the Prime Minister’s answer to the former Chancellor of the Exchequer, he referred only to the “rough shape” of an alternative deal. Does he have any detailed proposals, and can he confirm that he has not sent any detailed proposals to the EU?

[The Prime Minister]

We have been in extensive talks. As the right hon. Lady will appreciate, it does not make sense to negotiate in public, but it has been clear from what I have said already that the backstop is unacceptable and so is the political declaration as currently written. We have detailed proposals of how to address both issues and we are making progress. I say respectfully to friends on both sides of the House that now is the time to allow UK negotiators to get on with their job.

Priorities for Government

Debate between Boris Johnson and Yvette Cooper

Thursday 25th July 2019 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I thank my right hon. Friend. Valiant for truth in these matters, as he has been for so long, he is, of course, quite right that we have a fantastic opportunity now to take back control of our fisheries, and that is exactly what we will do. We will become an independent coastal state again, and we will, under no circumstances, make the mistake of the Government in the 1970s, who traded our fisheries away at the last moment in the talks. That was a reprehensible thing to do. We will take back our fisheries, and we will boost that extraordinary industry.

[Yvette Cooper (Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford) (Lab)]

The Prime Minister said in his statement that he had alternative arrangements for the border. I asked the Chancellor, the former Home Secretary, what those arrangements were and what the technology would be 17 times and he could not tell me. Can the Prime Minister tell me what the technology is and what the arrangements are, or is this just more bluster and guff?

[The Prime Minister]

As the right hon. Lady knows very well, it is common ground between the UK and indeed Dublin and the EU Commission that there are abundant facilitations already available, trusted trader schemes, electronic pre-registering, and all manner of ways of checking whether goods are contraband and checking for rules of origin, and they can take place away from the border. I want to make one point on which I think we are all agreed: under no circumstances will there be physical infrastructure or checks at the Northern Irish border. That is absolutely unthinkable.

Government Policy on Russia

Debate between Boris Johnson and Yvette Cooper

Tuesday 6th March 2018 Commons Chamber

[Boris Johnson]

From his vantage point as Chair of the ISC, my right hon. and learned Friend has been following this very closely. I undertake to get back to him on that matter as soon as possible.

[Yvette Cooper (Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford) (Lab)]

The Foreign Secretary rightly says that no attempt on an innocent life on our soil should go uninvestigated or unpunished. I would not expect him to comment on the investigation that is currently under way—obviously we all have concerns for the welfare of the two individuals—but what about the 14 suspicious deaths that several Members have now raised?

In many of those cases, UK authorities concluded that the deaths were suicides, despite the fact that there has now been considerable reported evidence, including in the BuzzFeed report, casting serious doubt on those conclusions. There are also claims that US intelligence may have provided further evidence to the contrary in those 14 individual cases, and there are serious questions about whether the police investigations were thorough enough. As a result of what he has said, will the Foreign Secretary now discuss urgently with the Home Secretary whether a National Crime Agency investigation, or other form of police investigation, and review of all 14 cases should now take place?

[Boris Johnson]

The right hon. Lady is perfectly right to say that, as my hon. Friend the Member for Tonbridge and Malling (Tom Tugendhat) pointed out, there are a number of deeply troubling cases, such as that of Mr Perepilichnyy. To the best of our knowledge at present, there is no further evidence that points in the direction of criminality, but what she says is very important. We will certainly follow it up and I will certainly have that discussion with the Home Secretary.

Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe

Debate between Boris Johnson and Yvette Cooper

Monday 13th November 2017 Commons Chamber

[Boris Johnson]

It is one of the features of British consular protection that we give it to dual nationals, irrespective of whether their British nationality is recognised by the country in which they run into trouble. That is a mark of the dedication of our consular staff to their job. We will continue to work for Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe and the other difficult consular cases in Iran for as long as those cases are outstanding.

[Yvette Cooper (Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford) (Lab)]

The Foreign Secretary has rightly said that the priority for everyone should be the return of a wrongfully and inhumanely imprisoned mother, who has been separated from her child. That is welcome, but he also knows that words matter. Every time he says things such as, “My words were simply open to misinterpretation”, he provides a lack of clarity and sounds as if he is wriggling in a way that other people can exploit. For the sake of Ms Zaghari-Ratcliffe, will he say unequivocally for the record, “I got it wrong”?

[Boris Johnson]

I hope that the House will understand with crystal clarity that Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe was there on holiday. She was not there in any professional capacity. In so far as people got a different impression from what I was saying at the FAC, that was my mistake. I should have been clearer—[Interruption.] With great respect, Members should listen to what I am saying. I should have been clearer. It was my mistake; I should have been clearer. I apologise for the distress and anguish that has been caused to Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe and her family. Our priority now is to do everything we can to get her out of Iran on humanitarian grounds.

Counter-Daesh Update

Debate between Boris Johnson and Yvette Cooper

Tuesday 7th November 2017 Commons Chamber

[Boris Johnson]

I thank my hon. Friend for the eloquent way he expressed himself on that point. This country and this House are indeed great friends of Kurdistan. They well remember the role played by the Conservative Government in 1991 in that mountainous region with the setting up of safe havens for the Kurds, which were the origin of the Kurdish Regional Government of today. I see doughty campaigners on the Opposition Benches who have also played a major role.

The Kurds can be in no doubt about our lasting friendship, but we did say to them that the referendum was not the right way forward. The best course now for our Kurdish friends is surely to take advantage of Mr Abadi, who is their best possible hope, and to enter into a solid and substantial negotiation with him.

[Yvette Cooper (Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford) (Lab)]

The Foreign Secretary had a week to correct the record and to apologise over Ms Zaghari-Ratcliffe, and he has not done so. This is not the first time that the Foreign Secretary has said things that are inaccurate or damaging, and he cannot simply shrug them off as a lack of clarity or a careless choice of words.

In this case, there are fears that this could mean the extended incarceration of a British-Iranian woman. The right hon. Gentleman knows that the lives and safety of British citizens across the globe depend on having a Foreign Secretary who does not bluster and who is not too careless or too lazy to consider his words. Will he now apologise? Does he accept that he cannot be trusted to do this job and that he should resign?

[Boris Johnson]

I really think that I have already made my position clear. Indeed, the Iranians have also made their position clear. There was absolutely no connection with anything that was said in the Foreign Affairs Committee last week. By the way, I see assorted members of the Committee here today, and they passed no comment on it. Those remarks had no impact on the judicial process in Tehran.

Rather than posturing and engaging in party political point-scoring, we need to recognise the extreme sensitivity of these negotiations and get on with securing the release of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe. That is why I am going to Tehran in the course of the next few weeks. I agree that it will not be easy at all because it is a very difficult negotiation, but that is the effort to which the Foreign Office is devoted and dedicated, and it deserves the right hon. Lady’s full support.

US Immigration Policy

Debate between Boris Johnson and Yvette Cooper

Monday 30th January 2017 Commons Chamber

[Boris Johnson]

My right hon. Friend is entirely right, in the sense that the Prime Minister succeeded the other day in getting her message across about NATO and President Trump affirmed very strongly his commitment to that alliance; it is vital for our security, particularly the article 5 guarantee, and the new President is very much in the right place on that. [Interruption.] He said so. It is totally right, of course, that the incoming President of our closest and most important ally should be accorded the honour of a state visit. That is supported by this Government and the invitation has been extended by Her Majesty the Queen, quite properly.

[Yvette Cooper (Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford) (Lab)]

This is not just about the impact on British citizens. One of our closest allies has chosen to ban refugees and target Muslims, and all the Foreign Secretary can say is that it would not be our policy. That is not good enough. Has he urged the US Administration to lift this order, to help refugees and to stop targeting Muslims? This order was signed on Holocaust Memorial Day; for the sake of history, for heaven’s sake have the guts to speak out.

[Boris Johnson]

As I say, it is open to Opposition MPs—indeed, MPs on both sides of the House—to come forward with yet fresher expressions of outrage about the presidential Executive order. They are entitled to do that. I share the widespread disquiet and I have made my views absolutely clear. I have said that it is divisive, I have said that it is wrong, and I have said that it stigmatises people on grounds of their nationality. But I will not do what I think the Labour party would do, which is disengage from conversations with our American friends and partners in such a way as to do material damage to the interests of UK citizens. We have secured important protections for people in this country, and that is the job of this Government.